Chapter 16

WITH my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first disposed to
believe that I must have had some hand in the attack upon my
sister, or at all events that as her near relation, popularly known to
be under obligations to her, I was a more legitimate object of sus-
picion than any one else. But when, in the clearer light of next
morning, I began to reconsider the matter and to hear it discussed
around me on all sides, I took another view of the case, which was
more reasonable.

Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his pipe,
from a quarter after eight o'clock to a quarter before ten. While he
was there, my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door,
and had exchanged Good Night with a farm-labourer going home.
The man could not be more particular as to the time at which he
saw her (he got into dense confusion when he tried to be), than that
it must have been before nine. When Joe went home at five mrnutes
before ten, he found her struck down on the floor, and promptly
called in assistance. The fire had not then burnt unusually low, nor
was the snuff of the candle very long; the candle, however, had
been blown out.

Nothing had been taken away from any part of the house.
Neither, beyond the blowing out of the candle -- which stood on a
table between the door and my sister, and was behind her when she
stood fucing the fire and was struck -- was there any disarrangement
of the kitchen, excepting such as she herself had made, in falling
and bleeding. But, there was one remarkable piece of evidence on
the spot. She had been struck with something blunt and heavy, on
the head and spine; after the blows were dealt, something heavy
had been thrown down at her with considerable violence, as she
lay on her face. And on the ground beside her, when Joe picked
her up, was a convict's leg-iron which had been filed asunder.

Now, Joe, examining this iron with a smith's eye, declared it to
have been filed asunder some time ago. The hue and cry going off
to the Hulks, and people coming thence to examine the iron, Joe's
opinion was corroborated. They did not undertake to say when it
had left the prison-ships to which it undoubtedly had once be-
longed; but they claimed to know for certain that that particular
manacle had not been worn by either of two convicts who had
escaped last night. Further, one of those two was already re-taken,
and had not freed himself of his iron.

Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my own here.
I believed the iron to be my convict's iron -- the iron I had seen and
heard him filing at, on the marshes -- but my mind did not accuse
him of having put it to its latest use. For, I believed one of two
other persons to have become possessed of it, and to have turned
it to this cruel account. Either Orlick, or the strange man who had
shown me the file.

Now, as to Orlick; he had gone to town exactly as he told us
when we picked him up at the turnpike, he had been seen about
town all the evening, he had been in divers companies in several
public-houses, and he had come back with myself and Mr Wopsle.
There was nothing against him, save the quarrel; and my sister
had quarrelled with him, and with everybody else about her, ten
thousand times. As to the strange man; if he had come back for his
two bank-notes there could have been no dispute about them,
because my sister was fully prepared to restore them. Besides, there
had been no altercation; the assailant had come in so silently
and suddenly, that she had been felled before she could look
round.

It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon, however
undesignedly, but I could hardly think otherwise. I suffered un-
speakable trouble while I considered and reconsidered whether I
should at last dissolve that spell of my childhood, and tell Joe all
the story. For months afterwards, I every day settled the question
finally in the negative, and reopened and reargued it next morning.
The contention came, after all, to this; -- the secret was such an old
one now, had so grown into me and become a part of myself, that
l could not tear it away. In addition to the dread that, having led
up to so much mischief, it would be now more likely than ever to
alienate Joe from me if he believed it, I had a further restraining
dread that he would not believe it, but would assort it with the
fabulous dogs and veal-cutlets as a monstrous invention. However,
I temporized with myself, of course -- for, was I not wavering be-
tween right and wrong, when the thing is always done? -- and re-
solved to make a full disclosure if I should see any such new
occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery of the
assailant.

The Constables, and the Bow Street men from London -- for,
this happened in the days of the extinct red-waistcoated police --
were about the house for a week or two, and did pretty much what
I have heard and read of like authorities doing in other such cases.
They took up several obviously wrong people, and they ran their
heads very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit
the circumstances to the ideas, instead of trying to extmct ideas
from the circumstances. Also, they stood about the door of the
Jolly Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks that filled the
whole neighbourhood with admiration; and they had a mysterious
manner of taking their drink, that was almost as good as taking the
culprit. But not quite, for they never did it.

Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, my sister
lay very ill in bed. Her sight was disturbed, so that she saw objects
multiplied, and grasped at visionary teacups and wine-glasses
instead of the realities; her hearing was greatly impaired; her
memory also; and her speech was unintelligible. When, at last,
she came round so far as to be helped down-stairs, it was still
necessary to keep my slate always by her, that she might indicate
in writing what she could not indicate in speech. As she was (very
bad handwriting apart) a more than indifferent speller, and as
Joe was a more than indifferent reader, extraordinary complica-
tions arose between them, which I was always called in to solve.
The administration of mutton instead of medicine, the substitution
of Tea for Joe, and the baker for bacon, were among the mildest
of my own mistakes.

However, her temper was greatly improved, and she was
patient. A tremulous uncertainty of the action of all her limbs soon
became a part of her regular state, and afterwards, at intervals of
two or three months, she would often put her hands to her head,
and would then remain for about a week at a time in some gloomy
aberration of mind. We were at a loss to find a suitable attendant
for her, until a circumstance happened conveniently to relieve us.
Mr Wopsle's great-aunt conquered a confirmed habit of living into
which she had fallen, and Biddy became a part of our establish-
ment.

It may have been about a month after my sister's reappearance
in the kitchen, when Biddy came to us with a small speckled box
containing the whole of her worldly effects, and became a blessing
to the household. Above all, she was a blessing to Joe, for the dear
old fellow was sadly cut up by the constant contemplation of the
wreck of his wife, and had been accustomed, while attending on
her of an evening, to turn to me every now and then and say,
with his blue eyes moistened, `Such a fine figure of a woman as she
once were, Pip!' Biddy instantly taking the cleverest charge of
her as though she had studied her from infancy, Joe became able
in some sort to appreciate the greater quiet of his life, and to get
down to the Jolly Bargemen now and then for a change that did
him good. It was characteristic of the police people that they had
all more or less suspected poor Joe (though he never knew it),
and that they had to a man concurred in regarding him as one of
the deepest spirits they had ever encountered.

Biddy's first triumph in her new office, was to solve a difficulty
that had completely vanquished me. I had tried hard at it, but had
made nothing of it. Thus it was:

Again and again and again, my sister had traced upon the slate,
a character that looked like a curious T, and then with the utmost
eagerness had called our attention to it as something she par-
ticularly wanted. I had in vain tried everything producible that
began with a T, from tar to toast and tub. At length it had come
into my head that the sign looked like a hammer, and on my lustily
calling that word in my sister's ear, she had begun to hammer on
the table and had expressed a qualified assent. Thereupon, I had
brought in all our hammers, one after another, but without avail.
Then I bethought me of a crutch, the shape being much the same
and I borrowed one in the village, and displayed it to my sister
with considerable confidence. But she shook her head to that
extent when she was shown it, that we were terrified lest in her
weak and shattered state she should dislocate her neck.

When my sister found that Biddy was very quick to under-
stand her, this mysterious sign reappeared on the slate. Biddy looked
thoughtfully at it, heard my explanation, looked thoughtfully at
my sister, looked thoughtfully at Joe (who was always represented
on the slate by his initial letter), and ran into the forge, followed by
Joe and me.

Orlick, without a doubt! She had lost his name, and could only
signify him by his hammer. We told him why we wanted him to
come into the kitchen, and he slowly laid down his hammer, wiped
his brow with his arm, took another wipe at it with his apron, and
cune slouching out, with a curious loose vagabond bend in the
knees that strongly distinguished him.

I confess that I expected to see my sister denounce him, and that
I was disappointed by the different result. She manifested the
greatest anxiety to be on good terms with him, was evidently
much pleased by his being at length produced, and motioned that
she would have him given something to drink. She watched his
countenance as if she were particularly wishful to be assured that
he took kindly to his reception, she showed every possible desire
to conciliate him, and there was an air of humble propitiation in all
she did, such as I have seen pervade the bearing of a child towards a
hard master. After that day, a day rarely passed without her draw-
ing the hammer on her slate, and without Orlick's slouching in
and standing doggedly before her, as if he knew no more than I
did what to make of it.